Love this photo! " [A] fox was spotted trailing a beagle in a forest near Montreal, Canada. The odd fox behavior was an effort to protect four newborn fox cubs nearby. The photographer noted that the fox outwitted the dog and saved the family. “It was the first time in my life when I saw foxes so brave, who managed to fight back in front of a hunting dog.” (Photo: Mircea Costina / Caters News )"

I had previously posted to a Chessbase article that WGM Alina L'Ami did for Chessbase that was published in Spanish. Here is the English version of her photo essay. She sure did pack a lot of travelling and sight-seeing into her week in Quebec!

LOL! I have to laugh. Why are people so shocked by this - as if it's an earth-shattering revelation? Anyone who has studied herstory knows that religious evolution is incremental, not "revelatory" at all, and does not develop in a vacuum, but is influenced and nuanced by everything going on in the environment at the time.
From Live Science

Researchers have identified what is believed to be the world's earliest surviving Christian inscription, shedding light on an ancient sect that followed the teachings of a second-century philosopher named Valentinus.
Officially called NCE 156, the inscription is written in Greek and is dated to the latter half of the second century, a time when the Roman Empire was at the height of its power.

An inscription is an artifact containing writing that is carved on stone. The only other written Christian remains that survive from that time period are fragments of papyri that quote part of the gospels and are written in ink. Stone inscriptions are more durable than papyri and are easier to display. NCE 156 also doesn't quote the gospels directly, instead its inscription alludes to Christian beliefs.

"If it is in fact a second-century inscription, as I think it probably is, it is about the earliest Christian material object that we possess," study researcher Gregory Snyder, of Davidson College in North Carolina, told LiveScience.

Snyder, who detailed the finding in the most recent issue of the Journal of Early Christian Studies, believes it to be a funeral epigram, incorporating both Christian and pagan elements. His work caps 50 years of research done by multiple scholars, much of it in Italian. The inscription is in the collection of the Capitoline Museums in Rome.

"Assuming that Professor Snyder is right, it's clearly the earliest identifiable Christian inscription," said Paul McKechnie, a professor of ancient history at Macquarie University in Australia, who has also studied the inscription.

As translated by Snyder, the inscription reads:

To my bath, the brothers of the bridal chamber carry the torches,[here] in our halls, they hunger for the [true] banquets,even while praising the Father and glorifying the Son.There [with the Father and the Son] is the only spring and source of truth.

Details on the provenance of the inscription are sketchy. It was first published in 1953 by Luigi Moretti in the "Bullettino della commissione archeologica comunale di Roma," an Italian archaeological journal published annually.

The only reference to where it was found is a note scribbled on a squeeze (a paper impression) of the inscription, Snyder said. According to that note, it was found in the suburbs of Rome near Tor Fiscale, a medieval tower. In ancient times, the location of the tower would have been near mile four of a roadway called the Via Latina.

How was it dated?

Margherita Guarducci, a well-known Italian epigrapher who passed away in 1999, proposed a second-century date for the inscription more than four decades ago. She argued that the way it was written, with a classical style of Greek letters, was only used in Rome during the first and second centuries.
After that, the letters change; for instance, the letter omega, Ω, changes into something closer to the letter w. The letter Sigma, Σ, changes into a symbol that resembles the letter c.

Snyder essentially added more evidence to Guarducci's theory. He analyzed a 1968 catalog of more than 1,700 inscriptions from Rome called "Inscriptiones graecae urbis Romae." He found 53 cases of Greek inscriptions with classical letterforms.

"Not one case is to be found in which, in the judgment of the [catalog]editors, an inscription with the classical letter forms found in NCE 156can be securely placed in the mid-third or fourth century," Snyder wrote in his paper.

In addition, Snyder analyzed an inventory of inscriptions from nearby Naples, published in a series of two volumes in the 1990s called "Iscrizioni greche d'Italia." He found only two examples that might date into the third century. "In sum, Guarducci's case for a second-century date for NCE 156 is stronger than ever," he wrote.

McKechnie said that, after reviewing Snyder's work, he agrees with the date. "The first time I read his article I was far from sure, but the second time I read it I was convinced by his argument about the letter shape."

Valentinus

The author of the inscription likely followed the teachings of a man named Valentinus, an early Christian teacher who would eventually be declared a heretic, Snyder said. The presence of the inscription suggests that a community of his followers may have lived on the Via Latina during the second century.

"We know that Valentinus was a famous Gnostic teacher in the second century (who) lived in Rome for something like 20 years, and was a very sophisticated ... poetic, talented, thinker, speaker, writer."
His teachings are believed to be preserved, to some degree, in the Gospel of Philip, a third-century anthology that was discovered in 1945 in the town of Nag Hammadi in Egypt. That gospel is a collection of gnostic beliefs, some of which were probably composed in the second century, that are written in a cryptic manner. However, like the inscription, it also refers prominently to a "bridal chamber."

One example, near the end of the gospel, reads in part:

The mysteries of truth are revealed, though in type and image. The bridal chamber, however, remains hidden. It is the Holy in the Holy. The veil at first concealed how God controlled the creation, but when the veil is rent and the things inside are revealed, this house will be left desolate, or rather will be destroyed. And the whole (inferior) godhead will flee from here, but not into the holies of the holies, for it will not be able to mix with the unmixed light and the flawless fullness, but will be under the wings of the cross and under its arms...
(Translation by Wesley Isenberg)

"It's not quite clear what it [the bridal chamber] is, it's explained to some degree, but explained in cryptic terms in the Gospel of Philip, it's a ritual involving freedom and purification and union with the deity," McKechnie said.

Perhaps rather than an actual ritual, the bridal chamber is a metaphor.

"It may be a metaphor for something that happens in death — maybe it's a kind of ritual that happens when people are still alive. That you achieve a new kind of existence or spiritual status based on this kind of wedding with your spiritual ideal counterpart," Snyder said.

"Some groups may have celebrated it as a concrete ritual, others perhaps sawit in metaphorical terms. I like the idea that it is connected with the death of the believer, who has cast off the mortal coil and enjoys a new life in the spirit," he added in a follow-up email.

But there were some important differences between Valentinians and other early Christians.

"Valentinians in particular, and gnostics more generally, most of them wouldn't, for example, get martyred," McKechnie said. "They wouldn't think it was wrong or unlawful to do the things that Christian martyrs refused to do, like take an oath in the name of Caesar or offer incense to a statue or that kind of thing."

The reason for their lack of bias has to do with the Valentinians' beliefs about all things physical.

"They believed that not only matter and the physical world was evil, but also that matter and the physical world was unimportant," McKechnie said. "Therefore, it was unimportant what you or what your body did in the physical world."

"It's mostly about the world of the mind."

Valentinians were also likely influenced by earlier Greek philosophers such as Plato, Snyder has found, though he doesn't think they would have interpreted the story of the resurrection of Jesus in a literal way.

"It's certainly not the case that they would have considered that to be a physical resurrection," he said. "Christians of this particular variety (who incorporated Plato's philosophy) generally speaking saw the material body as something not so desirable, not so good."

Christian and pagan

When analyzing the inscription, Snyder also noticed some similarities with funeral epigrams composed for non-Christians. In those inscriptions, the wedding imagery is used in a tragic way.

One example, written about 2,100 years ago, reads in part:

I am Theophila, short-lived daughter of Hecateus. The ghosts of the unmarried dead were courting me, a young maiden, for marriage, Hades outstripped the others and seized me, for he desired me, looking upon me as a Persephone more desirable than Persephone. And when he carved the letters on her tombstone, he wept for the girl Theophila from Sinope, her father Hecateus, who composed the wedding torches not for marriage but for Hades...
(Translation by Gregory Snyder)

"Typically, that wedding imagery is tragic," said Snyder. "Here's the promising young person entering into the prime of life, suddenly snatched away, and betrothed, married to Hades."

What the second-century Christian inscription does is turn this convention on its head. "They're playing with that... it's not decline, it's looking forward to a new life."

Snyder said that the mix of Christian and pagan traditions in the inscription is striking. He told LiveScience that he's studied early Christian paintings on the Via Latina that mix biblical themes, such as the story of Samson or the raising of Lazarus, along with figures from classical mythology, like that of Hercules.

"Those kinds of things I find particularly interesting, because they seem to suggest a period of time in which a Christian identity is flexible," Snyder said. "Is it just a simple either/or between pagan and Christian?" he asked. "Or is there really something rather like a spectrum? Or are you really sort of both in certain respects?"

In 2009 I received an unexpected gift of sixteen pieces of the Thistle and Rose chess pieces. You can read about it here.

Today I pulled out the bag I've stored the wrapped pieces in and took them out. I do not have pawns, unfortunately. I would love to have the matching pawns. It appears that they were sold separately as boxed sets (white and black separately) and are rare. I haven't been able to locate any for sale online. Not that I could afford to buy them anyway, I expect they are selling (if at all) at a premium.

I've been examining the pieces I received. The white pieces are a creamy color, they are not bright white porcelain. Also, the pieces are dusty. The ones that were out of the box I assume were displayed and that is why they are dusty. There is dust on the unboxed black pieces too.

Of the black pieces, the King, Queen and one John Knox serving as the Bishop did not come boxed. There are also two unboxed black towers. There are three boxed black pieces: one John Knox and two William Wallace, who served as the black Knight.

Of the white pieces, the King, Queen and one Thomas a' Becket serving as the Bishop did not come boxed. There are also two unboxed white towers. There are three boxed white pieces: one Thomas a' Becket and two Sir Francis Drake, who served as the white Knight.

As far as I can tell, there are no dates on the boxes but I'm no expert, I may not be looking for the right thing or not looking in the right place. According to information I found at "Beneagles Chess" website the boxes my pieces are in are "late," as the box design was changed somewhat from the box that holds the "early" pieces. None of the boxes I have has a dark border line all around the perimeter near the bottom, which is the indication of an "early" boxed piece.

I would like to learn more about these pieces/sets. How many were actually fired? Hundreds of thousands? I understand that the pieces were given out in First Class on British Caledonia flights. The lady who gave me the pieces travelled frequently in the 70's into the early 80's for her oil company employer. She lived in London for a number of years and travelled back and forth between Canada , the US and the UK frequently.

Peter Thomson (Perth) Ltd. issued the pieces individually, aside from the pawns, and they were filled with Beneagles 70 proof blended Scotch. The pieces were designed by Ann Whittet, an artist from Perth, Scotland, and were modeled by Frederick Mellen of George Wade & Sons Ltd, Stoke-on-Trent, England. I understand the pieces were fired at the Wade Porcelain complex in Northern Ireland.

Many photographs of the various pieces can be found elsewhere on line. I haven't yet photographed my pieces.

The bottom of each piece has embossed letters but it's difficult for me with my bad close-up eyesight (even with glasses) to make out some of the letters, or possibly some of them are numbers. Looking at the black king, "Beneagles Scotch Whisky" can be discerned; beneath this lettering, two undecipherable letters or numbers, a forward slash, the letters "WFM7" and possibly "A."

Ahhh, I think I may be on to something -- looking at the black queen piece now, it looks like "B1" or "81," forward slash, "WFM74" or "WFM7A."

The unboxed John Knox piece -- looks like "B9" or "B5," forward slash, "WFM74" or WFM7A."
The boxed John Knox has gold foil across the bottom and what is probably a cork in the bung hole, so I didn't remove it.

Both of my boxed William Wallace pieces have intact gold foil across the bottom and I assume corks intact.

Both black castle/rooks are unboxed but they have intact gold foil across the bottom and corks intact. I didn't try to peek underneath!

Moving on to the white pieces, the king has foil on the bottom and intact cork; so does the queen. However, the foil labels are different. The queen's label is much simpler than that on the white king, which has "Product En Ecosse" and printed underneath that "Product of Scotland", and other information. I'll have to take some photos of those labels. The queen's label does not have the "Product En Ecosse" or "Product of Scotland" on it, and the eagle icon is larger than that on the king's label.

Thomas a' Becket unboxed piece also has a label on it and intact cork, with a label that looks identical to that of the queen. The boxed Thomas a' Becket has what looks like "B9" or possible "89," forward slash, and "WFM76" - but it's a little hard to tell if it's actually a 6 or not because there is a firing flaw over part of the number - it's a little oval-shaped hole! So, it might be a 5, or a 6.

Both of my white Francis Drakes are boxed. On the first one I'm looking at, the first two letters/numbers are not well-impressed and looks something like "BIO" - maybe B10?, followed by a forward slash, and "WFM76." "WFM76" is quite clearly impressed. The second Francis Drake has an intact foil seal and cork and feels heavy -- is it possible after all these years it still has some whisky inside of it? The label is the same type as that worn by the white king, described above, and includes "Product En Ecosse" and "Product of Scotland" imprinted.

I have two unboxed white castle/rooks. One has a seal and cork intact and feels "heavy" - wondering the same thing as with the Francis Drake, does it still have some whisky in it??? The label is the plainer label like the black queen's label described above. The other white castle/rook has imprinted what looks like "B11" or "811," a forward slash, then the letters "WFM76" or possibly "WFM7G" -- there is a slight "smut" by the number 6 that may make it look like a "G."

Sooo, I need to put a little table together with this information; but it appears at first glance that I have black pieces fired in 1974 and white pieces fired in 1976. That's all I'm willing to hazard a guess at, for the present!

Those are my pieces. I need to shop for a nice vitrine to install them in, out of harm's way. They are too lovely to be buried away wrapped in tissue paper and toweling inside a paper shopping bag!

Cleaning them - well, the pieces without corks and labels can be wet-washed, but the pieces with the intact foil labels and corks, I'll only be able to clean them with soft brushes and cloth, maybe a little water not anywhere near the label! A couple are rather grubby looking. The boxed pieces I'll just keep in the boxes for the time being. I don't know if those pieces reside inside their original boxes -- I'm only leaving things as they came to me, as much as possible. But eventually, if I want to display the pieces, I'll have to remove one "Knight" piece each from the two boxed white and two boxed black that I have.

Friday, September 30, 2011

Long story - I'm now a member of the "Crazy Cougars Rock" (CCR) Club consisting of several ladies of a certain age who ride the bus to and from work five days a week on the same route. I'm not going to reveal all of the details of how we all met, who we are, our personal stories and how we arrived at our group name, you would certainly blush, darlings.

Anyway, it is in part due to my fledgling membership in the CCR that I decided to enter the Hales Corners Chess Challenge XIV (October 22, 2011, details) as well as a certain nostalgia because it will be about a year ago that Shira-then-Evans and now Shira Sanford and her then-fiance, Crispin Sanford, came up from a work project in Chicago to visit me for a happy weekend! That weekend visit happened to coincide with the Hales Corners Chess Challenge XII, for which Goddesschess was sponsoring prizes for the chess femmes. The upshot was that Shira and I played in the HCC Challenge XII. Crispin was also supposed to play but he chickened out at the last moment and spent the day, instead, taking photographs of Shira and I (to be fair, almost entirely of Shira) playing chess and doing intense work on his Mac tablet thingy on several projects he had going at the time.

Well, water under the bridge and all that. The CCR think I'm some sort of genius or something, despite my repeated and heated denials that I don't know a damn thing about how to play chess other than the basic moves, and that's why 8 year olds with no ratings can beat my pants off. Hmmm, that sounds rather vulgar, doesn't it? Oh well... And the funniest part is I haven't even begun to tell them my Chess Tales.

It's not just a personal life I have, darlings. I also have a Goddesschess Life that is entirely separate and sometimes IT takes over everything! I had committed to writing an article for a certain chess magazine to be published in the near future that I had - honest - in the back of my mind but the time somehow crept up on me and here it was, the last day of September and the article was due. EEK!

Thank Goddess for lunch hours! I wrote most of it during that hour and in about 2.5 frantic hours this evening after I got home from the office, I did the rest and emailed it off, complete with a couple of images that are not properly embedded into the Word document. Oh well. That is now the editor's problem, not mine :) I made my deadline.

With the start of a new blog entirely devoted to female fashion and personal care things that - trust me - our male readers will not want to read about, including the undertaking of certain sewing projects (that ancient Kenmore sewing machine of mine still works!) -- plus we had a tremendous windstorm come through the last 1.5 days and my backyard is now an incredible MESS of prematurely fallen leaves, fallen branches, twigs, and LIMBS (big tree limbs) that need to be cleaned up before I can venture forth with the trusty Sears Craftsman lawnmower with 6.5 HP (zoom zoom zoom) --

To sum it up for you, darlings, I'VE BEEN BUSY.

NOW the Milwaukee Brewers decide to go into play-off mode! NOW the Wisconsin Badgers are scheduled to play the Nebraska Corn Huskers and Madison is going to be ROCKING so hard I'll be able to go to sleep tonight like a baby being rocked in a cradle - and the game isn't until tomorrow! And of course, on Sunday, the 2011 WORLD FOOTBALL (not soccer) CHAMPIONS, THE GREEN BAY PACKERS, will be playing against - I've no idea. But come game time on Sunday my eyes will be glued to the television set with the volume turned all the way down whilst my ears are attuned to Packers the volume turned up coverage on WTMJ Radion 620 AM in Milwaukee, WI. Yeah, baby! As far as I'm concerned, nobody does play-by-play radio announcing of pro football better than our WTMJ radio team. I prefer to listen to them while watching the action on televison rather than the t.v. announcers.

So - mea culpa, darlings. Right now I'm busy doing other things rather than blogging here. I'll be back once the blizzards start roaring in Wisconsin. You know they always do :)

Hou Yifan lost to a player rated 200 ELO points below her? Can you say - OVERTRAINED? Still, there is much time between now and her Women's World Championship Match with GM Koneru Humpy of India, so -- we shall see...

Here is the "Best Players" List after R6. I have highlighted the chess femmes I've been following in red:

Stone age toddlers may have attended a form of prehistoric nursery where they were encouraged to develop their creative skills in cave art, say archaeologists.

Research indicates young children expressed themselves in an ancient form of finger-painting. And, just as in modern homes, their early efforts were given pride of place on the living room wall.

A Cambridge University conference on the archaeology of childhood on Friday reveals a tantalising glimpse into life for children in the palaeolithic age, an estimated 13,000 years ago.

Archaeologists at one of the most famous prehistoric decorated caves in France, the complex of caverns at Rouffignac in the Dordogne known as the Cave of a Hundred Mammoths, have discovered that children were actively helped to express themselves through finger fluting – running fingers over soft red clay to produce decorative crisscrossing lines, zig-zags and swirls.

The stunning drawings, including 158 depictions of mammoths, 28 bisons, 15 horses, 12 goats, 10 woolly rhinoceroses, four human figures and one bear, form just a small proportion of the art found within the five-mile cave system.

The majority of the drawings are flutings covering the walls and roofs of the many galleries and passages in the complex. One chamber is so rich in flutings by children it is believed to be an area set aside for them. The marks of four children, estimated to be aged between two and seven, have been identified there.

"It suggests it was a special place for children. Adults were there, but the vast majority of artwork is by children," said Jess Cooney, a PhD student at the university's archaeology department.

"It's speculation, but I think in this particular chamber children were encouraged to make more art than adults. It could have been a playroom where the children gathered or a room for practice where they were encouraged to make these marks in order that they could grow into artists and make the beautiful paintings and engravings we find throughout the cave, and throughout France and Spain. Or it could have been a room used for a ritual for particular children, perhaps an initiation of sorts."
The presence of children's art was first revealed in 2006 by archaeologists Leslie Van Gelder, of Walden University, in the US, and her husband Kevin Sharpe. Cooney, working alongside Van Gelder, has spent two years analysing the presence of the hunter-gatherer offspring.

Flutings thought to be by a five-year-old girl are the most prolific throughout the cave system. Work by four adults has also been identified, though it is possible there were two further adults present.

The juxtaposition of the flutings of individuals indicate the relationships between the cave dwellers, the researchers say. For example, the markings show that one seven-year-old girl was most often in the company of the smallest of the adults, probably a male and possibly an older brother.

"Some of the children's flutings are high up on walls and on the ceilings, so they must have been held up to make them or have been sitting on someone's shoulders," said Cooney.

Flutings by the two-year-old suggest the child's hand was guided by an adult. Cooney said: "The flutings and fingers are very controlled, which is highly unusual for a child of that age, and suggests it was being taught. The research shows us that children were everywhere, even in the deepest, darkest, caves, furthest from the entrance. They were so involved in the art you really begin to question how heavily they were involved in everyday life.

"To be honest, I think there were probably very few restrictions on what children were allowed to do, and where they were allowed to go, and who they were allowed to go with.

"The art shows us this is not an activity where children were running amok. It shows collaboration between children and adults, and adults encouraging children to make these marks. This was a communal activity."

The significance of finger flutings, also found in other caves in France, Spain, New Guinea and Australia, has been widely debated in archaeological circles. Some regard the marks as doodlings, prehistoric graffiti, while others suggest rituals.

"We don't know why people made them. We can make guesses like they were for initiation rituals, for training of some kind, or simply something to do on a rainy day," said Cooney.

"In addition to the simple, meandering lines, there are flutings of animals and shapes that appear to be crude outlines of faces, almost cartoon-like in appearance. There are hut shapes called tectiforms, markings thought to have a symbolic meaning which are only found in a very specific area of France.
Cooney said the object of her research was "to allow prehistoric children to have a voice", because so much archaeological study focused on men's activities.

"What I found in Rouffignac is that the children are screaming from the walls to be heard. Their presence is everywhere. And there is a five-year-old girl constantly shouting: 'I wanna paint, I wanna paint'."

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"Advanced Chess" Leon 2002

About Me

I'm one of the founders of Goddesschess, which went online May 6, 1999. I earned an under-graduate degree in history and economics going to college part-time nights, weekends and summer school while working full-time, and went on to earn a post-graduate degree (J.D.) I love the challenge of research, and spend my spare time reading and writing about my favorite subjects, travelling and working in my gardens. My family and my friends are most important in my life. For the second half of my life, I'm focusing on "doable" things to help local chess initiatives, starting in my own home town. And I'm experiencing a sort of personal "Renaissance" that is leaving me rather breathless...